1978, The Franklin
...
revisited

Nearly 20 years after the Franklin had been canoed for the first time,
three of the original two teams to make the attempt (Dean, Hawkins and
Scarlett) returned with their children, along with Dean’s wife Stephanie
and the boys’ art teacher John Gibb.

They avoided the troublesome
upper Franklin.

Rain and being perpetually cold and wet (this was still before the days
of rubber wetsuits) made it less than perfect at times. But Dean and his
family battled through to a cavern he remembered seeing just before the
Gaylard Rapids in 1959.

His description of their arrival there is a justification
of the whole exhilarating, exhausting, demanding but rewarding effort
to tame wild rivers:

“We were not only out of the weather but were
able to thaw out around a roaring fire, fed by dry driftwood that had
been washed into the wide mouth of the cavern.

“After getting into dry clothes and gorging ourselves
on hot food we were new people. All in all, it was a home away from home!”

§

::: TASMANIAN HERITAGE

Shooting
the Franklin: III

1964, Pieman River

Olegas Truchanas, Peter Dombrovskis, John Hawkins and Howard Dean canoed
the Pieman from the Murchison bridge at Tullah to Corinna. This was 22 years
before this enchanting river was to disappear forever under the impoundment
created by the 122m high Reece Dam. "The haunting beauty of the Pieman
was too much to resist" and he and Hawkins did a short journey on the
river again with family in 1976.

“In 1971, while standing on the beach at Lake Pedder admiring
the indescribeable beauty of the place, I discussed with Olegas Truchanas
the possibility of saving the lake. He said, 'We’ll never save this
lake, but we will save the Pieman'.

That same year the Tasmanian Parliament approved the Pieman River Power
Development and the conservation movement, still in its infancy, was unable
to stop the destruction of either this magnificent river or Lake Pedder.

The next battle was to save the Franklin River.”

1982, King River revisited

“Over 30 years after our first disastrous trip, I returned to the
King River with my son Geoff. In contrast to last time we had a fun run through
the gorge, mainly because we now used more suitable craft and travelled singly
in two-man inflatable dinghies — the right size for one person and
a pack.

Being inflatable, slamming into a rock was not necessarily a disaster — you
usually bounced off without any serious damage to the raft or yourself

These ‘rubber duckies’ had been pioneered by Paul Smith and
Bob Brown several years earlier on the Franklin. You could bungle through
rapids sideways or backwards and still get away with it. Being inflatable,
slamming into a rock was not necessarily a disaster — you usually bounced
off without any serious damage to the raft or yourself.”

In fact, the only real mishap on this trip was that Dean managed to foul
both ends of the paddle against high rocks and the shaft of the paddle slammed
back onto his face, knocking out a front tooth. (Adding insult to injury,
he notes that son Geoff callously called him clumsy!)

In a postscript, Johnson Dean concludes:

“This was the end of an era.

The following years would see a battle between forces intent on destroying
this wild river and conservationists who were determined that it should be
saved for future generations to enjoy.

The King, the Pieman, the Franklin, the Gordon. Of these four great rivers
in Tasmania’s western wilderness only one, the Franklin, still runs
undammed to the sea.” ¶